Koliedrus
02-12-2003, 08:21 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59302-2003Feb11.html
Ready or Not? A Capital Question
Terror Alert Prompts Varying Responses
By Mark Leibovich and Roxanne Roberts
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 12, 2003; Page C01
For what it's worth, the wife of the former CIA and FBI director is nervous.
"We have food for about six months," says Lynda Webster, wife of William Webster. "We have extra dog food in case things get desperate." She has stockpiled charcoal and lots of candles, she says. And water and granola bars in both of their cars.
She also has this qualifier: "My husband thinks I'm nuts."
So it is in this time of Level Orange, when the federal government recommends that the public store three days' worth of food and water in case terrorists attack with chemical, biological or radiological weapons. As threat levels vary, people remain who they are. Which is to say, their reactions are all over the emergency escape map.
You hear about this heightened state of alert and you become alarmed, fatalistic, maybe even hedonistic. ("We're all gonna die, let's party!") You expect imminent doom, or you roll your eyes. Or you see a business opportunity.
James Carville envisions a company that would come to your home and, for a nice fee, outfit a room with every possible terror-proof provision. Carville calls the service a "Fristicizer" -- named for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who wrote a book on bioterror preparedness. The Fristicizer would do all your taping and sealing, haul over the right food, water, medicine and whatnot in the right quantities.
Everything you could ever need in one "safe room" in the event of the unthinkable. But increasingly thinkable.
"Whoever does this will make a literal fortune," says the Democratic consultant and TV pundit. "This is my idea. I want 10 percent."
He can spend his money decorating his sealed room, if he ever gets one. As of now, Carville says he is taking steps to prepare, or maybe prepare to prepare. "I'm going to go out and buy Frist's book," he says.
There are elaborate preparers and defiant slackers. Carol Joynt, owner of Nathans restaurant in Georgetown, keeps stockpiles of canned tuna, canned fruit, garbanzo beans and hard candy, plus jugs of water, a flashlight, a radio and a large supply of batteries. She also has gas masks.
Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, keeps surgical masks, a week's worth of water and plenty of canned tuna in his basement.
"And probably several months' worth of liquor," the conservative activist adds. "In case I have to wash out a cut."
Clinton-era secretary of labor Robert Reich is staunchly unprepared. "I'm doing nothing," he writes in an e-mail. "I'm getting on with my life."
He says it is insane for anyone to think they can individually "prepare" for a terrorist attack. The notion, he says, is as "bizarre as survivalists of the 1950s who tried to turn their basements into nuclear bomb shelters."
It's worth noting, however, that Reich is writing from Cambridge, Mass. Government officials say a more likely target is New York or Washington.
Accordingly, anxiety tends to run highest in these two cities. Nearly everyone interviewed from these places is taking the recent warning seriously.
"Everyone I know has stocked up on water -- me too, last week," former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan writes in an e-mail. She lives in New York. "I suspect they've stocked up on canned goods. I've been laggardly there and if something happens today it appears I'll be living on Dole's pineapples for a while."
The divide between the "prepared" and the "very prepared" seems to fall between people who are willing to seal and tape, and those who aren't. It's easy enough to pick up extra water or canned ravioli at the supermarket, but getting supplies for sealing and taping involves something entirely different -- extra work.
"Yes, I have tuna fish; yes, I have an ample supply of batteries; and yes, I have a black-and-white battery-operated television," says Ken Duberstein, who was President Reagan's chief of staff in the late '80s. But that's as far as it goes. "I haven't sealed anything since Hechinger's went out of business," he says.
Joynt can't help wonder if all these contingencies won't turn out to be unused vestiges of this scary era -- like the bomb shelters of the Cold War. "They're telling us to get all this plastic. My son says, 'When we seal this room, what are we going to breathe?' And he's right. Count on an 11-year-old to be smarter than Homeland Security."
Republican fundraiser Sydney Ferguson says her camping experience will be helpful in the event of an emergency. She already owns sleeping bags, tents, propane stoves, water purifiers, flashlights and a canoe. "I've added to my arsenal oxygen, bottled water, enough Power Bars to feed a Boy Scout troop," says Ferguson, who is the senior vice president at global energy company USEC in Bethesda. She also keeps a supply of potassium iodide around, as well as the antibiotic Cipro, and a couple of four-wheel-drive cars. "But I did most of this before Y2K," she says.
C-SPAN's Brian Lamb is typically bland on the subject of preparedness. "C-SPAN has contingencies," he says through a spokesman. And a nation is relieved.
Like most people interviewed, Capitals owner Ted Leonsis says he takes these threats seriously. He has spoken to his children and mapped out a plan to get them out of school to where they need to go in the event of a catastrophe. "We hope and pray that nothing of this nature ever happens," he writes in an e-mail. Which goes without saying, except that you can't say it enough.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
Ready or Not? A Capital Question
Terror Alert Prompts Varying Responses
By Mark Leibovich and Roxanne Roberts
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 12, 2003; Page C01
For what it's worth, the wife of the former CIA and FBI director is nervous.
"We have food for about six months," says Lynda Webster, wife of William Webster. "We have extra dog food in case things get desperate." She has stockpiled charcoal and lots of candles, she says. And water and granola bars in both of their cars.
She also has this qualifier: "My husband thinks I'm nuts."
So it is in this time of Level Orange, when the federal government recommends that the public store three days' worth of food and water in case terrorists attack with chemical, biological or radiological weapons. As threat levels vary, people remain who they are. Which is to say, their reactions are all over the emergency escape map.
You hear about this heightened state of alert and you become alarmed, fatalistic, maybe even hedonistic. ("We're all gonna die, let's party!") You expect imminent doom, or you roll your eyes. Or you see a business opportunity.
James Carville envisions a company that would come to your home and, for a nice fee, outfit a room with every possible terror-proof provision. Carville calls the service a "Fristicizer" -- named for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who wrote a book on bioterror preparedness. The Fristicizer would do all your taping and sealing, haul over the right food, water, medicine and whatnot in the right quantities.
Everything you could ever need in one "safe room" in the event of the unthinkable. But increasingly thinkable.
"Whoever does this will make a literal fortune," says the Democratic consultant and TV pundit. "This is my idea. I want 10 percent."
He can spend his money decorating his sealed room, if he ever gets one. As of now, Carville says he is taking steps to prepare, or maybe prepare to prepare. "I'm going to go out and buy Frist's book," he says.
There are elaborate preparers and defiant slackers. Carol Joynt, owner of Nathans restaurant in Georgetown, keeps stockpiles of canned tuna, canned fruit, garbanzo beans and hard candy, plus jugs of water, a flashlight, a radio and a large supply of batteries. She also has gas masks.
Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, keeps surgical masks, a week's worth of water and plenty of canned tuna in his basement.
"And probably several months' worth of liquor," the conservative activist adds. "In case I have to wash out a cut."
Clinton-era secretary of labor Robert Reich is staunchly unprepared. "I'm doing nothing," he writes in an e-mail. "I'm getting on with my life."
He says it is insane for anyone to think they can individually "prepare" for a terrorist attack. The notion, he says, is as "bizarre as survivalists of the 1950s who tried to turn their basements into nuclear bomb shelters."
It's worth noting, however, that Reich is writing from Cambridge, Mass. Government officials say a more likely target is New York or Washington.
Accordingly, anxiety tends to run highest in these two cities. Nearly everyone interviewed from these places is taking the recent warning seriously.
"Everyone I know has stocked up on water -- me too, last week," former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan writes in an e-mail. She lives in New York. "I suspect they've stocked up on canned goods. I've been laggardly there and if something happens today it appears I'll be living on Dole's pineapples for a while."
The divide between the "prepared" and the "very prepared" seems to fall between people who are willing to seal and tape, and those who aren't. It's easy enough to pick up extra water or canned ravioli at the supermarket, but getting supplies for sealing and taping involves something entirely different -- extra work.
"Yes, I have tuna fish; yes, I have an ample supply of batteries; and yes, I have a black-and-white battery-operated television," says Ken Duberstein, who was President Reagan's chief of staff in the late '80s. But that's as far as it goes. "I haven't sealed anything since Hechinger's went out of business," he says.
Joynt can't help wonder if all these contingencies won't turn out to be unused vestiges of this scary era -- like the bomb shelters of the Cold War. "They're telling us to get all this plastic. My son says, 'When we seal this room, what are we going to breathe?' And he's right. Count on an 11-year-old to be smarter than Homeland Security."
Republican fundraiser Sydney Ferguson says her camping experience will be helpful in the event of an emergency. She already owns sleeping bags, tents, propane stoves, water purifiers, flashlights and a canoe. "I've added to my arsenal oxygen, bottled water, enough Power Bars to feed a Boy Scout troop," says Ferguson, who is the senior vice president at global energy company USEC in Bethesda. She also keeps a supply of potassium iodide around, as well as the antibiotic Cipro, and a couple of four-wheel-drive cars. "But I did most of this before Y2K," she says.
C-SPAN's Brian Lamb is typically bland on the subject of preparedness. "C-SPAN has contingencies," he says through a spokesman. And a nation is relieved.
Like most people interviewed, Capitals owner Ted Leonsis says he takes these threats seriously. He has spoken to his children and mapped out a plan to get them out of school to where they need to go in the event of a catastrophe. "We hope and pray that nothing of this nature ever happens," he writes in an e-mail. Which goes without saying, except that you can't say it enough.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company